Government
plans ‘immunization weeks’ to target all children
The
government on Monday launched special ‘immunization weeks’ to widen its
vaccination net and include children in marginalised populations, urban slums
and other hard-to-reach places. ‘Four weeks, with a week each in April, June,
July and August, will be used to hold special immunisation sessions in
high-risk areas across the country,’ said Anuradha Gupta, additional secretary,
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and mission director, National Rural
Health Mission. Close to 75 lakh children every year miss childhood
vaccinations. A majority of them are from among underserved and marginalised
populations. Globally, every fifth child is unimmunized.
‘The
Special Immunization Week is an opportunity to reinforce India’s call to action
for child survival and development,’ Gupta said, launching a new communication
campaign attended by the media, development partners, and health officials
here. The new communication campaign includes a new logo, TV spot, radio spot
and posters. ‘The new logo and other communication material will promote
consistent messaging to raise awareness on the urgency of reaching every child
with life-saving immunization,’ Gupta added.
She
encouraged her state counterparts and development partners to focus on ensuring
that vaccines that are provided free under the Universal Immunization Programme
(UIP) and reach every last child in the country. Louis-Georges Arsenault,
UNICEF India Representative said: ‘In India, inequity persists within and
between states. There are geographical, rural-urban, poor-rich, gender and
other related differences in vaccination coverage. Disparities need to be
addressed to reach every last child. The special immunization week is an
opportunity for all of us to renew focus on ensuring equity in immunization
coverage.’
‘The
special immunization week lays sufficient importance on generating awareness
about immunization and to reach marginalised populations in brick kilns, urban
slums and other hard-to-reach areas. Engagement with media and other key
stakeholders have been planned and will be continued in the following weeks,’
said Ajay Khera, deputy commissioner, Child Health and Immunization.
02.05.2013
Clench your right hand to form
stronger memories
A new study suggests clenching your right hand may
help form a stronger memory of an event or action, and clenching your left may help you recollect
the memory later.
Ruth Propper and colleagues from Montclair State University separate the participants into groups and asked them to first memorize, and later recall words from a list of 72 words.
There were 4 groups who clenched their hands; One group clenched their right fist for about 90 seconds immediately prior to memorizing the list and then did the same immediately prior to recollecting the words. Another group clenched their left hand prior to both memorizing and recollecting. Two other groups clenched one hand prior to memorizing (either the left or right hand) and the opposite hand prior to recollecting. A control group did not clench their fists at any point.
The group that clenched their right fist when memorizing the list and then clenched the left when recollecting the words performed better than all the other hand clenching groups. This group also did better than the group that did not clench their fists at all, though this difference was not statistically ''significant''.
"The findings suggest that some simple body movements - by temporarily changing the way the brain functions- can improve memory. Future research will examine whether hand clenching can also improve other forms of cognition, for example verbal or spatial abilities," said Ruth Propper, lead scientist on the study.
The researchers clarify that further work is needed to test whether their results with word lists also extend to memories of visual stimuli like remembering a face, or spatial tasks, such as remembering where keys were placed.
Based on previous work, the researchers suggested that this effect of hand-clenching on memory may be because clenching a fist activates specific brain regions that are also associated with memory formation.
02.05.2013
A minute's success pays the failure of years
ROBERT BROWNING
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